You
by x-MJ-x
Summary: "What do you want?", "You." that conversation is playing on her mind and she can't help but wonder when he will come for her. My take on that moment from 6 x 16 'Coda.


**Hello lovely people, **

**So it's me again and another Emily and Doyle story, I can't believe the reaction to **_**Becoming Lauren Reynolds **_**I really wasn't sure about it because I always write Emily and Hotch but you inspired me. This one is not the one I'd planned on writing but something which struck me whilst on vacation. **

**This is dedicated to Nena Cero because we were engaged in a conversation about the Emily/ Ian dynamic and the potential love story there – I know it's something that you see and whilst this is by no means going to explore 'love' it will look at something stronger than like... Hmmm... So this is for you, you could say that you were my inspiration. **

**Slight spoiler for 6 x16 **_**Coda... **_

**My author's note is the same as ever: I DO NOT own Criminal Minds, its characters or plots and all recognisable dialogues will be clearly marked in italics. **

**I hope you enjoy this one.**

* * *

_~ "__We cannot __change__ our past. We cannot __change__ the fact that __people__ act in a certain way. We cannot __change__ the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.__"~ Charles R. Swindoll. _

"_What do you want?" _

"_You." _

"_Oh not today, don't worry about that." "But Soon."_

* * *

Her fists clenched and unclenched as she leant against the door of her apartment, her breathing heavy and her eyes closed. This was too much. She had risked everything and now her adrenaline was pumping, fear, fright and terror somehow seeming secondary to the much more potent stream of exhilaration which was suddenly flowing through her body.

She swallowed hard, her ears filling with the sounds this action produced as she recalled the charged atmosphere between them upon their meeting half an hour ago. It had been a stupid move, she had shown him her cards too soon, had let her emotion betray her until she was sure that the team were now in more danger than they had ever been. Whilst he had been a mere threat, a name whispered by Sean McAllister, Tsia Mosley and Clyde Easter, she had been able to deal with him. Singlehandedly she had been staving off the imminent threat. Or at least she had thought she had been. Now of course she knew. He was smarter than her and stronger – he always had been – a factor she had failed to consider when she had left the assignment. Back then she had been the spy and he the spied upon. That had made him twice as dangerous as she had ever been, not least because she had never been sure when she would be caught out. She had known she had been good, careful and meticulous, but he had been surrounded by people who were suspicious of her and she had been certain that her number would be up but she had made it out alive and now the tables were turned. This time, he was the one in possession of the facts and she was the one looking over her shoulder, never sure when he would come for her.

She was terrified of him. Not because she was particularly concerned about herself, although she was not as stupid as to say that she was happy to throw away her life - because she did value her existence - but she was more terrified for her friends, who were unaware of the evil which pursued them with unrelenting malice. It was all her fault and right now, given her conversation with him, she was not sure how much longer she could fight him off by herself.

He was dangerous. That much was unquestionable, he had the power to take away everything and everyone she held dear - the friends who had become family, the job she loved, the life she lived and yet sitting opposite him, her heart beating fast and his alluring eyes flashing, there had been a different kind of thrill – not fear but something far more uncertain.

She moved into her apartment slowly, kicking off her boots and shrugging out of her coat as she thought about the duplicity of the one thing he had said that she couldn't shake. When she had asked him what he wanted he had replied simply _"you"_ and that had been enough to send her mind reeling down dark avenues, places she couldn't afford to go if she wished to remain objective. It was just that there was something so captivating about his energy, something so sexy about the danger he presented her that she couldn't help but hope that he had meant that he _wanted _her as opposed to the more likely fact that he wanted her dead.

After going through the motions of getting home – locking the door tightly, switching on the lights to avoid the rising fear she now felt being here in this airy apartment all alone and feeding Sergio she slumped onto the couch and tried to steady her breathing.

She drew in a deep breath and then exhaled, repeating the process several times in the hope that by reaching what could be considered as an island of calm where nothing and no one could touch her, where Doyle had never existed, her heart rate which was still racing, would return to normal. She reached down her body, grabbing her Glock from the holster she wore beneath her blazer and began engaging and disengaging the safety a few times as if to check that it was working.

She knew that when it came to it, it was going to be just him and her – the battle of the two foes as she fought for good and he for evil and she knew she had to be ready for that, but the truth was when Doyle had been taken down and incarcerated, she had been glad to hear that they had not killed him. As strange as it seemed and as terrified as she had been that one day something like this might happen, she had developed a loyalty to him which in those last days she hadn't even been sure belonged to her cover, to Lauren. Perhaps it had been the fact that she had lived in such close proximity to him for so long, maybe it was the discovery that he had a son and therefore became infinitely more human to her than he had seemed on the pages of their profile. Or maybe it was the fact that when he came home to the villa in Tuscany, throwing down his weapons and dismissing his men, she could see that the horror of what he had to do for his cause affected him far more than anyone else could see; with her, alone in the dark as he held her close and she gave him her body he had been just a man. In those moments she had never been given reason to believe that he would hurt her, he had not been the monster she had been lead to believe that he was and that had confused her.

Whilst she knew he had to pay for his crime and that contrary to their previous beliefs concerning a vague connection to the name whispered around terrorists rings and anti terrorist cells alike, he had been _Valhalla,_ the name behind some of the biggest terrorist plots the IRA had ever seen, she had found that the lines between what was good and what was bad became infinitely more blurred in those final days when she had come to realise that he loved her. That had been real – he had loved Lauren Reynolds because she sympathised with his struggles, she understood them and she never judged him. Instead she had always been there to offer him support, to share his burden, to bring him pleasure and to be everything that he needed her to be. She had felt the strength of his emotion, had even kept the symbol of it for eight whole years, hidden in a safe under lock and key but she had always felt it – the hypnotising pull of that ring and she felt it now more than ever before.

She got up, shifting Sergio onto the seat next to her as she made her way to the safe. She held her breath as she twisted the lock into its combination and picked up the brown packet which lay inside of it. Over the last few weeks, checking on the packet had become something of an obsession but she had never rifled through it looking for the ring – until now.

She tipped the packet upside down, watching as documents splayed across the floor and not quite being able to help the small smile which crept onto her face as she heard the metallic bounce of the ring as it coiled against the chain it was held on.

She picked it up, the thin chain slipping easily through her fingers as all the real emotions of the moment he had given it to her washed over her. Until that point, she had suspected that he was falling for her, but in giving her the ring, he had put his heart on the line and she had taken it - letting him put the ring on her in full knowledge that she was double crossing him. She had tried to pretend that she felt nothing, that him forming such an emotional attachment to her was just another step closer to bringing him down, but the truth was she had been falling for him too. She had loved him in a strange and strong way and that was why she had been so shocked to hear that he had escaped imprisonment -because she had known that in working again to stop him getting to Declan all of those old feelings would resurface and make everything harder...

She knew she shouldn't, but the pull of that ring and everything it stood for just made it impossible for her to do anything other than put it on. It slipped over her head easily and contrary to her expectation it did not tighten and begin to constrict her airway as she had imagined it would – there was no curse attached to it as she might have expected. It just simply hung there around her neck, an inanimate object, slightly tarnished by the years it had spent buried among the documents from her life as Lauren but it was no more dangerous than any other piece of jewellery she owned. Except that this old necklace held raw memories for her of a love she had lost, a time in her life when however complicated everything had seemed, the purity of her emotions had been simple...

Now, all she had was confusion again. This time Doyle was not looking for solely personal revenge, he was going after the people she loved and she should hate him, she should want nothing more than for him to die and to be gone, to eliminate the threat and she did want those things - or at least she had until tonight. When she had seen him things hadn't seemed so cut and dry anymore – all those feelings she had been struggling with for eight years had come bubbling to the surface and now she felt she needed him. She wanted him in his capacity as a man. She had always been attracted to him and tonight hadn't been any different. The tension between them had been sizzling and for a moment she hadn't wanted to leave. Getting in her car and driving away had been the single most uncomfortable experience of her entire life. Adrenaline had been pumping through her body as she realised what a close encounter with death she had just walked away from and then there was the insatiable desire from this dangerous man which rose within her and filled her mind and her body until he was all she could think about.

She knew that he would be hiding in the shadows, there but not quite, until the moment he chose to strike and then boy would she know about it. She sensed that said moment was not far off, it throbbed in the air, ominous and strong and she knew that when it happened, the world as she knew it would collapse and everything she thought she knew would come crashing down around her, but still she was experiencing a deep set need to seek him out, to finish what had been started eight years ago...

She fingered the ring delicately, hoping to draw out one of her better memories of her time with him but drawing a blank. There was nothing that could compare to the intensity of those eyes as they sparkled with desire and blood-lust earlier tonight. She needed him, she craved him and...

* * *

When she heard the shattering of glass in the living room she knew that she wouldn't have to wait much longer to face him. He had come for her...

His heavy black boots landed on the soft, plush beige carpet and he brushed the excess glass which had become attached to his thick leather jacket off. He was in defensive mode immediately, his weapon raised and his legs apart, he had a feeling that Emily Prentiss who clearly considered herself to be smarter than him would be ready for him, but this time finally he had outsmarted her and it felt so good.

He glanced around the room he found himself in, taking in the homely features of this apartment – the large couch, the unfathomable art on the walls, the cat curled up on the cushion and... No sign of her. The woman who had orchestrated his destruction, who had been his undoing, was nowhere to be found.

He had been watching her ever since she had arrived back here this evening. He knew it was a risk coming out in the open, but he couldn't seem to help himself. When he had first arrived here he had assigned someone – a halfwit who she would never suspect - to carry out surveillance on the woman who had plagued his thoughts for eight years. In wakefulness and in sleep she had been the only thing he had thought of – he had become desperate to find her again, not least because he had a very painful revenge to exact. Watching her every move had lead him to recognise her patterns, to understand that she had no family to speak of, save for the people she worked for – he had learned that her mother, a high profile ambassador was all but estranged from her high-flying, single minded daughter. Of course, that had initially made her seem harder to hurt – but then he had discovered the depth of her feelings for the team she worked with and suddenly pain had become so easy for him to inflict. At first, just knowing that he was watching her without her knowledge had been enough but soon he had become overcome with a need to make contact with her – the photos to start with and then the flower on her doorstep and the exhilaration these simple gestures had caused in him became like a drug and he had found himself once again addicted to the alluring charms of this woman.

Soon mere reports had not been enough to satiate his need to know her, to outwit her and to frighten her. He had needed the visual proof, firsthand of the effects of his efforts –so he had watched her night after night from an empty apartment he had taken over across the street, he watched her sit there vigilant and alert as she pointed her gun at the door and waited for him to come.

That was what had made this so delicious – the irony of his entry, the spontaneity of it – he had wanted to show her that Ian Doyle was not predictable and could not be mastered – that he was the master of himself and of her and where was she? Absent from this symbolic moment that was where. He moved carefully into the room with more stealth than his age suggested he possessed. He couldn't be too careful – his strength might have outweighed hers but she was in her own environment, she had the advantage... He knew she was still in the apartment, there was no possibility that she could have left – all he had to do was find her before she found him.

As he moved towards the door, the room was plunged into darkness and his grip on the gun he held increased by instinct. Despite the realisation that she had once again bested him, he couldn't help the smile which crept onto his lips as he heard the safety disengage and felt the cool barrel of a weapon connect with the back of his neck...

"_Hello Lauren, it's good to see you." _He smiled as he felt her breath on his skin.

"Anyone ever tell you it's rude to barge in on a lady when she's at home?" Her voice was surprisingly calm and did not betray the fear and excitement which twinned inside her, confusing the Hell out of the usually composed Emily Prentiss.

"There you are love, for a moment I didn't think you were coming." He smirked, gratified by the way she pushed the barrel of gun more firmly against his neck.

"Is there a reason you didn't use the door?" She asked, ignoring his snide comment and keeping things frustratingly ordinary, as if he really lived here and had made a delinquent entry when she would have invited him in willingly – only she knew how truth this was...

"Come on love, give an old timer some credit. I had to maintain the 'element of surprise' – you're usually so good at anticipating my movements – you remember don't you?" He asked, reminding her of the time they had spent together in Tuscany and how she had double crossed him.

"I remember alright." She murmured and he sensed something in her voice, the same something he had been struggling with since their meeting earlier this evening.

They were both silent for a moment and in the darkness he heard her adjusting her stance, one arm wrapping around him as she grappled for his gun. He didn't even put up a fight, dropping it before she could take it. This was the way it had always been with her – he tried to fight her but in the end she always defeated him, she always won.

"So this is how it's going to go?" She asked and he noted the marked surprise in her voice.

"This is it. Did you expect something different love? Some great battle?" He asked, with a dry laugh which did not betray his emotions.

"You're not going to put up a fight?" She asked in bemusement.

"I don't need to. I know you're not going to shoot." He told her confidently.

"How do you know?" She asked anger biting at her clipped detached tone. She wished more than anything that she could take the damn shot and have done with him, but her feelings were once again getting in the way.

"Well _Emily Prentiss, _you've had that gun trained on me for the best part of five minutes and I'm still breathing, you know I think it's less a case of can't shoot and more a case of_ won't_ – you don't _want_ to kill me." He told her.

"But that's what you want right? That's why you're here now... It's time...you want to kill me right?" She asked and by now her voice was shaking.

He shook his head firmly 'no' and heard her breath hitch in her throat as she waited for him to continue, to say something...anything.

"I told you what I want_ Emily_." He told her, his voice barely a whisper which did crazy things to her.

"What if what you want isn't something you can have?" She asked, testing him, wondering if after all this time he would just take what he wanted or if somewhere deep inside of him he still retained some respect for her...

"I think we both know I always get what I want." He replied without a moment's hesitation, his hand snaking around their closely twined bodies and settling upon her backside in an unfailingly suggestive gesture.

* * *

She swallowed hard and he chuckled a little, she had always been so easy. In the first couple of weeks she had seemed hesitant and until much later he had always been curious as to why – now of course he knew. After that initial settling in period however, sometimes it had only taken a look, a single glance and she was putty in his hands. It was the one place where he had dominance. In all other facets of their life together she had been in control and she had stolen his heart with very little effort on her part and it had been invigorating for him to know that he could affect some control over her in this way, sexually speaking.

"I know you Ian... you've committed crimes and done things that I don't even want to think about... But you're no monster... Not really..." She told him and even to her it sounded less like a certainty and more like a plea, in her desperation she took one hand off her gun and slid it down to join his, hers covering his wider callused hand and squeezing it gently.

"Oh you know me do you love? Then you'll know I never do it with the lights off." He murmured huskily and before she knew what had happened she felt his elbow connect with the space directly below her ribcage and she fell to the floor. It took him only seconds to reach the light switch and suddenly the room was bathed in light and from her position on the floor she could see desire burning in his eyes.

She pulled herself quickly into a sitting position but resistance was futile. She had been incapacitated by him and he knew it. He took full advantage of her temporary affliction and soon he had her flat on her back as he straddled her, their faces only inches apart.

She looked up at him with slightly frightened eyes as she realised that she had once again fallen into his trap. She had been taken in by his words, his wonderful way with words and the intensity of her emotions and now he had her exactly where he wanted her. Always beneath him – that was the way it had always been. She had thought she was stronger and smarter and she had even foolishly thought, just for a while – when her team had become the most important thing in her life – that she had conquered this man forever but now she knew- She would always be inferior to him...

She could feel his hardness pressing firmly into her thigh and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut, feeling the waves of disgust course through her for only a second before excitement took over. He was pressed tightly to her, one arms supporting his weight whilst the other gripped her chin and he pulled her head around to face him.

"Look at me." He instructed when he saw her eyes were still firmly shut.

* * *

She was completely still for a moment as she adjusted to his weight and she desperately tried to calm her raging nerves, but eventually she complied to his wishes, her eyes opening and meeting his with a suggestive and dark sparkle.

"I _will_ have you Emily Prentiss." He told her, before lowering his head a little and pressing his lips to hers in a bruising kiss.

Her breath was stolen and she tried her hardest not to kiss him back, not to submit to her greatest desires but the efforts she put into achieving this goal were hopeless. He commanded her without a single word – his skilful tongue spearing through her tightly sealed lips without the accordance of any courtesy and thrusting forth into her dark cavern with unrelenting possession.

After a time, she realised that she had surpassed the need to pretend that fighting was something she should do and she decided that just for tonight, whilst she did not have a gun pointed at her head and whilst his defences were down, she would use him in the way that he had used her once – for pleasure, because if this was to be her final day on Earth then she wanted to make it a damned good one. She held no illusions, she knew that he was still just as volatile as he had ever been, that here and now like this he was more dangerous than ever and of course she knew that with his skewed sense of justice he would still want her to pay for what she had done, the role she had played in the destruction of his operations as _Valhalla, _but that didn't mean she couldn't milk these final moments of life for everything they were worth.

His lips had left hers somewhere in the middle of her thought process and now the rough stubble of his beard scratched at the exposed parts of her neck as his wide hands traced their way down her body bunching her white cotton tee beneath them and finally coming to a halt as they closed around the cool metal of the ring which hung around her neck. He gripped it, tugging on it gently so as to avoid it's breakage and simultaneously to draw her attention back to him and she waited, biting her lip slightly, for his reaction.

"You never forgot huh?" He asked, his eyes sparkling at this knowledge.

"Never could. I remember everything, always have. You're in my head Ian and you're..." She stopped for a moment pushing up against him until they were both in a semi-sitting position. "In here." She told him, placing his hand over her heart.

"You remember everything?" He asked as his hands slid inside her blazer and shirked it off her shoulders.

"Mmm hmm." She mumbled incoherently as her own short nails dug into the lapels of his leather jacket and drew it away from his broad shoulders.

"So you remember how good we were together like this?"

"Well it's how we began... you, me and your big bed with the blood red sheets." She murmured as his hands slid beneath her tee and pulled it up.

"You make it sound like some great love story." He chuckled as the fabric hit the floor and she gasped a little as the coolness of the ring and its chain met her skin.

"It wasn't?" She teased, she knew they were both playing with ideas that ought not to be brought into the light of day.

"Well mostly we were just about a lot of sex – hot and nasty sex if I remember rightly." He told her in his deep Irish drawl, his voice sending shivers up her spine.

Mostly? She sensed a 'but', a pretty big but, hanging in the air – unspoken and potent. She leant her head forward, resting it on his shoulder as she dropped kisses to his neck and her hands worked themselves lower, gripping his own t-shirt firmly.

"But you loved me didn't you Ian? That's what makes this so difficult for you right?" She asked, seeing the answer in his eyes before he even tried to formulate a spoken answer.

"I... I loved you once, I thought you were the real deal but then you had to go and betray me." He told her and she sensed a slight sadness in his words which surprised her.

"You know Ian, the woman you loved, the woman who reciprocated those feelings – she never existed. Lauren never really existed -she was a carefully thought out character, a product of Central Intelligence – the kind of woman you wanted, what you needed... But in the end, she was always going to betray you – you were always meant to be conquered and she was always meant to die, it was never supposed to happen like this." She told him as she pulled his t-shirt clean off and her nails scraped their way down the familiar plane of his solid and well toned abdomen, taking in the pattern of 'battle wounds' there as she went, noticing the several new additions since she had last seen him this way.

"I don't think that's true, I think that's what it started off as, I think you saw me as an assignment and I admire that – your objectivity, even the cruelty of it. But I think you saw something in me that you didn't expect to see. I think you saw that I was just a man, fighting for what I believed in and I think you started to forgive me for my sins – I think that you, _Emily Prentiss_ not Lauren Reynolds started to fall for me – that's why you couldn't shoot me, that's why you _wouldn't_." He told her and if she hadn't been in the room with him she would have sworn that words had come from someone else. They sounded almost romantic and this was something he had never been.

"I never loved you Ian... I played my part, I made you believe I did but I only saw you as an assignment. There were days when all I wanted was to put a bullet in your head but the only thing that stopped me was knowing that death was the easy way out." She told him, lying easily and hoping that the truth of her emotion was not betrayed on her face.

He made to answer her, but instead took her by surprise, latching his mouth onto her lace covered breast and drawing her sensitised skin to a stiff peak beneath the material. She gasped out loud, her fingers digging into his shoulders as her body involuntarily arched towards him and he used this position to his advantage – quickly unhooking her bra and drawing it off her body.

"Now that's just not true is it Emily? You wouldn't be reacting this way if you felt nothing for me." He dismissed her denial instead choosing to concentrate on her sighs and moans as his hand worked her right breast and his mouth her left...

"Maybe... Maybe this is just sex, like you said. Maybe this is how it ends." She sighed as she felt him ease her back down and her bare back hit the carpet, his hardness pressed more insistently against her burning centre.

"How it ends?"

"You... and me... and everything twisted and toxic about this. Maybe this is how we end it, how we finally get over this – how we find the strength to do what needs to be done." She told him, close to tears as his rough fingers found the waistband of her pants and began to open the fastening.

"Is that the only way this ends? Some epic battle... between 'good and evil'?" He asked with a slight chuckle as he quickly stripped her of her pants until she was left vulnerable to him, covered only by the thin lace panties she wore.

"What alternative do we have Ian? You're a fugitive, Interpol's most wanted and I'm an FBI agent. Someday soon, my team's going to get a call to consult on a case which has all the behaviourisms which I'll recognise as yours and I won't be able to hide what I know, I couldn't– your crimes here will come to light and they'll find you... they'll find me too, buried deep in the case files and the whole world will fall apart, everything that they think they know about me won't mean a thing and they'll want vengeance. What I know for sure is that they won't rest until you're dead." She told him, her voice shaking with the high emotion of this situation.

It was awful – either way she was playing a losing game. Either she lost the man who still controlled her after all this time, the man who confused her and made things seem less black and white, or she lost the people she loved more than life itself – the ones she would do anything for. She knew deep down that this meant she had already made up her mind about the ending of this but just for a while longer she wanted to contemplate the fact that either way she lost something important.

"It doesn't have to be that way Emily and you know it." He replied with a low growl as he felt her undo the button and zipper of his own jeans and thrust her hands inside of them.

"Then tell me how it could be Ian, tell me what future there is for you and me." She replied genuinely interested to hear his thoughts on the subject as she continued her attentions, rolling his jeans down his strong legs as he struggled to toe his boots off.

"You could help me Emily, you could free me." He replied gruffly, a wave of desire washing over him as she stroked him through his boxers.

"I can't do that Ian. I tried once and you wouldn't listen to me. I tried to warn you about the dangers of your lifestyle but I found that you were beyond my help and look at you now – hiding in the shadows and trying to take a revenge you don't really want." She told him, dropping a kiss to his jaw and pushing his boxers down.

"Oh I want it alright." He growled as her hand stroked his bare skin and he felt himself hardening more than he had imagined possible.

"On who? Me? You have me right where you want me, I'm not fighting you anymore – _I'm tired of being afraid. _So if killing me brings you happiness, if it helps you find peace then do it but that has to be the end of it. _Whatever you want to do to me I accept but please, spare my team_ – they had nothing to do with this..."She half begged as he tipped her hips, angling her body towards him as he traced his lips over her bare torso and made his way lower, his fingers gripping her panties and taking them with him as he continued his journey moving ever lower until his breath tickled the sensitive skin of her burning intimacy.

"You're Hell bent on death aren't you love? All you have to do is come away with me – you and me, Emily and Ian... it could be..." He made to finish his sentence as he pressed a surprisingly tender kiss to her intimacy which made her let out an involuntarily scream of delight but somehow she found the strength to interrupt.

"Impossible. That's what it _is. _There's no 'could be' about it. We were over a long time ago Ian." She told him although she had to admit she didn't quite believe it, the strength of the feelings which were roaring in her heart told her as much.

"That may be, but we're here. We survived, we could be something great." He told her.

She was silent as a realisation dawned upon her. It didn't matter how intimate they were right now, he was interested in her for one reason only – her resourcefulness and knowledge as an FBI agent. He was a man who struck fear into the hearts of the strongest of men and yet here he was now showing that clearly, he was still in love with Lauren Reynolds – he probably always would be, he didn't want _her_. Emily Prentiss was of little consequence to him, she could live or she could die and he wouldn't blink an eye, as long as Lauren was resurrected and after so much time, the one thing she knew for certain was that _Lauren Reynolds was dead _and she could never come back_. _

"You mean that we could mastermind operations together, you mean that we could be great in the criminal network, the IRA. I was never that woman Ian; I always try to do the right thing." She told him, clenching her hands into the plush pile of the carpet as his tongue flicked between her folds.

"The right thing? Is that what you think you did all those years ago?" He asked out of curiosity, but alluding to a much bigger question.

"What are you talking about?" She asked not even sure she could string a coherent thought together anymore.

"I _know_ Emily." He told her seriously, travelling back up her body until he was face to face and his desire pressed firmly against her heated centre.

"What? What do you know?" She asked, desperate for him to be inside of her.

"I _know_. What you did eight years ago – I know it was you." He told her simply and before she could reply, he had thrust into her hard and she let out a scream of pleasured-pain at the sensation – so familiar and yet so new...

"What was me? What did I do Ian?" She asked with growing dread as he manipulated her legs around his waist and began to thrust into her with zeal.

"I know you told those bastards about my son, I know you're the reason that he's dead." He told her and for a moment her heart stopped. He knew?

Of course he did.

How could he not?

How could she have been so stupid?

* * *

That was why he was here. He wasn't here because he really wanted this or because he saw them as part of some love story. He simply wanted to know why she had exploited his son when he had been imprisoned. If only he could understand that what she had done, however horrific it might have seemed, was nothing compared to what the CIA and all the other organisations desperate for a piece of him would have done to Declan if ever they had discovered that she had kept him a secret.

But it was more than that, Emily had wanted to hurt Doyle and knowing that no amount of personal pain would achieve this end, she had utilised the only person left in the world worth more than a scrap to him – his son. Plus there was the very realistic truth that she had wanted little Declan to be safe from the influence of his father's less than legitimate lifestyle.

"Ian I..." She started breathily, but his thrusts were becoming more violent and made it difficult for her to concentrate.

"You what Emily? You thought you could hurt me most by using him? Well guess what? It worked. Do you know what they did to him, to my angel boy?"

"Maybe...Oh God... Maybe it's not as bad as you think." She mumbled as her hips met his involuntarily.

"Not as bad as I think? How can it be any worse than my son... my five year old son being killed by some nameless, faceless bastard?" He asked, his hands closing around her neck as he pulled her closer, pushed himself deeper.

He was receiving so much pleasure from this possession of her and it felt so good to take his anger out in this way, but that was nothing compared with hearing her pained screams as he pounded into her – it felt like the sweetest retribution to his tortured years, always wondering and never knowing... Now at least she would pay, she would give herself to him and in some way this was payment for his son's innocence and the fact that he had been robbed of a life of glory and honour.

"What if I told you..." She hesitated for a moment and then he halted his movement, staring down at her as if waiting for some kind of big revelation.

"What if I told you it was me...I took the photos you saw..." She told him hesitantly and she couldn't even say that she was surprised when his hands went around her throat and began to constrict her airway.

"_You? _Then you killed my boy?"

"Listen to me... Ian listen..." She begged her hands scraping at his desperately.

After a while he seemed to relent, the need for information seeming to override the need to get his revenge. She took a huge gulping breath and rubbed at her neck, not failing to notice that he kept her pinned between him and the floor.

"You don't understand how it was after you were arrested. My bosses and people even higher than them were looking for any dirt they could get on you and I knew that if they found out about Declan and I hadn't told them about him they'd use him against you – I had to put him in the profile, I just didn't realise that that would make it worse... I had to do something to help him, I had to protect him – you know what he meant to me..."

"What did you do Emily?" He growled venomously his face inches from hers.

"I took the photos... I planned it all... Ian I faked Declan's death..." She felt the words escape her before she even knew what was happening.

"What? Declan's... still alive?"

"Yes." The word was barely a whisper as he balanced above her in a volatile manner.

She looked into his eyes, trying to decipher his reaction but they had become unreadable vaults. This terrified her the most. Not because she was afraid that he would kill her, she fully expected that – it was that he would make her betray Declan's location and above all things; it was of paramount importance that this remained a secret.

He leaned towards her, his breath mingling with hers before he lowered his lips onto hers and gave her a forceful kiss. She was shocked by this to say the least but she felt herself responding to the passion he instilled in the action.

"Where?" He mumbled against her neck as he continued his earlier thrusts, needing to abate the rising tension in his body in any way possible.

"I..." She started, pushing against him and pressing a kiss to his rough lips before she continued. "I don't know." She told him, hoping he would buy it.

"Don't lie to me!" He roared as he took hold of her shoulders and shook her hard.

She winced a little, panic rising within her as she realised how quickly this had gone from intimate to violent. This wasn't about love, this wasn't about lust this wasn't even about 'just sex' anymore. This was possession in its most violent form, this was revenge and she could not do anything about it.

"I'm not... I wouldn't. I have no reason to lie anymore, _I have no illusions."_ She told him and although she wasn't being exactly honest with him, her tone seemed to give him some assurance and he released her shoulders dropping his lips to the area now covered in the impressions from his firm grip almost apologetically.

"I can trust you?" He asked, clarifying this is in his mind.

"I told you, I have no reason to lie to you." She promised, forcing her expression into one of sincerity.

"Then you'll help me find my son?" He asked and she could hear his saddening desperation. In many ways she wished it didn't have to be this way. If only he could see. If only he realised why she had done what she had done – that it was his influence which she was trying to protect Declan from. If only he could admit that the life of warrior had taken its toll on him, if only he could see that his thirteen year old son did not deserve that life, that there was no honour in it... Only death, it was maddening.

"Ian I..."

"You could do the right thing here Emily, the right thing for me, the right thing for you... and the right thing for Declan. You could help me find him, we could disappear together and be a family..." He told her and again he surprised her with his romanticised view of what they were, of who they were and what they could be. She wanted to scream at him that keeping Declan from him _was_ the right thing to do.

Instead, she took a moment to really look at him as his pace quickened and he brought her closer to oblivion. She sensed this was the last time she would get to observe him this way before the world as she knew it would come crashing down around her. He still possessed that rugged handsomeness she had been beguiled by, his face was still angular and masculine, the slight silver beard he had now adding to his appeal. He was thinner though as if the years of anguish had whittled away at the very structure of him, the foundations of him... It was his eyes that had changed the most. Where previously, eight years ago, they had burned with passion – both for her and for the cause he fought so fervently for, now those same eyes were the windows into the soul of a man whose spirit had been broken, whose fight had left him.

She reached up, her fingers brushing against his temple and massaging the area comfortingly and she noticed him relax a little, almost as if he mistakenly thought she had acquiesced to helping him find Declan without saying a word to that effect.

"What happened to you Ian?" She asked and the question was genuine. "What happened to the man you used to be?" She continued and for a moment they were both still and silent until he gripped the hand she had placed on his face and kissed the edge of her thumb.

"_You_." He whispered quietly as he dove into her and sent them both careening over the edges of their control, the word sending shivers down her spine.

* * *

They laid together in a messy tangle on her living room carpet and in the tense silence it seemed like they were both trying to decide how to move on from this moment. It said something pretty definitive about them, but neither liked to put a label on what exactly it was.

She took in some heavy breaths as she stared up at the whitewashed ceiling, knowing that soon this moment was going to self destruct and one or the other of them would come to their senses. She counted backwards from ten maybe a hundred times and still couldn't relax. She did not want to become complacent – the moment she did, she was sure to wind up dead. She steadied her heartbeat, contemplating the fact that her Glock lay on the table just inside the door whilst his laid in his holster not ten feet away. What were the chances that she could get to it before he did?

She turned towards him, watching him as he laid silently, his eyes half closed and his chest heaving. Right now he seemed more vulnerable than he ever had and it had to do with more than his nakedness at this moment. She sensed that his defences were down, she had seemingly shattered them all and as they lay here together she knew that he was overwhelmed by a feeling of hopefulness – that they could have a future, that they would find Declan and that they would survive. She understood that feeling, had even felt it herself but she seemed to realise, unlike him, that hoping for their future was indeed a hope-_less _endeavour.

After a while, he turned towards her, his eyes boring straight through her and she had to wonder if the intensity of that stare revealed her lies to him. If it did then he didn't voice this fact. Instead he reached out, pulling her body closer to him and lacing his fingers through hers.

"I don't want to hurt you Emily." He told her and she sensed his sincerity, she knew that he was living in a delusional space wherein they could be together and happy – somewhere she had been too, for a while, until she realised the truth.

She drew in a steadying breath as she prepared to answer, moistening her suddenly dry lips before she spoke.

"I know you don't." She replied simply as she felt his grip on her hand slacken and waited for the tell tale heaviness of his breathing as sleep took him over...

* * *

She dressed quickly, her clothes barely even rustling as she did so. This was important, he could not be woken. She crossed the room on tiptoes, moving as slowly and carefully as she could so as not to disturb his sleeping form.

As her hand closed around the Glock on the table she could not help but notice how her body seemed to convulse in repulsion and panic. She took a moment to compose herself before she picked it up properly, its weight feeling a hundred times more of a burden as her body seemed to turn to lead.

She pushed through the fact that tonight and everything that had happened between them made this infinitely more difficult and on some levels almost cruel. She hated herself. Right now she wasn't even giving him the chance to fight, but she knew that if the tables had been turned he wouldn't have thought twice.

She came to stand next to him, the gun aimed at the space directly between his eyes – in preparation for a sure-fire kill shot. Her breaths came out in nervous puffs as she watched him sleep, unaware of her plans.

"I know you don't _want_ to hurt me Ian..." She whispered to his sleeping form "but you will..." She continued, her voice raising just an octave and breaking into his dreams.

He stirred and then his eyes opened, fixing on hers and making her heart race with fear and guilt as he faced down the barrel of her gun without blinking.

"Because I will _never_ help you find Declan. He's safe and that's all you need to know." She told him bitterly continuing her earlier train of thought and pushing away the rising sickness which filled her.

"You..." He started to reply but she never gave him the chance to finish. She had disengaged the safety and the shot was taken before she could even think about what his reply might have been.

The last sound he made on Earth was a kind of strangled squeak as the bullet hit him, penetrating his skull and settling in his brain, killing his instantly. She hadn't even seen the life leave him before he was gone...

* * *

She dropped the gun and knelt at his side, scrambling for his clothes and attempting to dress him. It proved more difficult than she anticipated, his body heavy and unyielding in death, but eventually she managed it, noting how aside from the single bullet wound he might have been sleeping.

She had managed to keep her emotions in check long enough to go about the task objectively, but now as the truth of what she had done hit her, she felt the horror of it all wash over her.

She paced for several minutes, taking care not to look down at his body as she did so and waited for her emotions to subside. Tears streamed down her face as she realised that whilst she had lost him, the man who had imprisoned her heart for so long, she was finally free – she had nothing else to fear and that was one of the best realisations she had ever come to in her life. But that didn't stop her feeling physically sick at the thought of what she had done. She wondered if that feeling would ever leave her.

After a while she knew she had to do something about all of this, she finally had to face up to her past. She couldn't change it, she couldn't change him – she had tried in vain and this had been the result -but the one thing she could do was learn from it. She could appreciate that he would always be a part of her, that he would somehow always define her in some way but she had her future to think of, a future free of fear and obsession. It was a future free of him and full of the people who loved her for what she was now and for who she was – Emily Prentiss. It was this thought which drove her to pull out her cell phone and hit speed dial.

The call took several seconds to connect but soon his voice filled her ears – comforting and calm.

* * *

"_Emily? Is everything Ok?" He asked, his voice filled with sleep. _

She processed his question for a moment knowing the answer immediately.

"No it isn't." She replied, her voice breaking as her tears spilled forth.

"_What is it, what's wrong?" He asked worriedly. _

"I... I just... I need you... I need you all... Please... Please come, I'm at home, please come." She begged through her sobs,

"_We'll be right there. You're safe right?" He asked without a moment's hesitation. _

"I am now... Thanks Hotch." She told him, her voice still wavering with emotion this time of a different kind. It was the knowledge that whatever happened and throughout everything to come they would always be right there. He murmured a 'no problem' before disconnecting the call and leaving her to her thoughts.

As she reflected on everything that had happened, she recognised that yes, it was a certainty that she could not change her past but she knew one thing for sure. She could sure as Hell change her future...

* * *

**Well there it is... I hope you liked what I did with the moment from "Coda" – I have to say now that I've reached the end of the this, it's turned into something quite different to how I intended it to be when I started out on it... **

**I had envisaged it being an exploration of lust vs. love and that kind of thing and I supposed I saw this as a different way of facing up to the final showdown between Emily and Doyle but I don't know that I intended for him to die... Well I guess I must have been in the mood for his death when I wrote it. **

**As I wrote this it kind of became quite special to me. Particularly because at first I wasn't sure about this one when I got halfway through, so I's like to take this opportunity to thanking 'Charmony' for encouraging me to get this back out of the recycle bin and finish it- you've been a star darling and I hope this goes some way towards making you feel better. **

**Anyway as you'll see, what was originally planned to be just a Doyle/ Emily story turned into quite an introspective piece exploring Doyle on a bit more of a personal level and what I tried to do here was have them both go through that confusion of 'I should hate the other person but I can't' and experience everything in between hate and love I guess. I really hope it worked out and would love to know what you thought. **

**I hope I caught all the edits, if not please forgive me. **

**Your comments always make me smile, so feel free to leave a review. **

**Thanks for reading, **

**Much love, **

_**X~Michelle~X**_


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